Whitman-Walker, a Longtime Front in AIDS War, Moves Out

[Are_grits_groceries]

The last of the boxes were hauled away yesterday from the Whitman-Walker Clinic at 1407 S St. NW. The moving truck made its final run. The rooms were empty. The heat was off.

A chandelier hung in the silence of the foyer. A chandelier in an AIDS clinic! It had long cast its ridiculous grandiose glow, shining over the certain morbidity of the early days when there were no drugs, no answers, no dignity and little relief.

Hundreds who walked through the doors of the building in the 1980s and 1990s died. And then hundreds more began to live.

If a physical space can capture the arc of an epidemic, the Whitman-Walker Clinic, at the corner of 14th and S streets, occupied the front lines of AIDS in Washington for 21 years. It was there when the average life expectancy for someone with AIDS was two years, and it was there when new drugs became available that made HIV infection a manageable disease to live with.

Whitman-Walker sold the property for $8 million to beat back mounting debt. The nonprofit community health organization will continue to operate from consolidated quarters two blocks south on 14th Street.

Psychologist Patricia Hawkins has been with the District's Whitman-Walker Clinic since 1984. In the old days, she said, "we lived in fear of raids."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121503352.html?hpid=artslot

They fought the good fight there!

[Captain Hilts]

1. And DC still has a very high AIDS infection rate. Far higher than the rest of the US.

Thanks for your work, Pat!

[bigtree]

2. "occupied the front lines of AIDS in Washington"

. . . indeed, it did.

[MountainLaurel]

3. Sad to hear

A friend of mine interned there for a while, working on safe-sex campaigns for women.